Standard computer clipboard software solutions allow users to place text or images on the computer clipboard through manual cut or copy actions and then paste the most recently collected item to a destination target area. Using these solutions, users commonly attempt to paste improper data to the target area. Consider this example:
Step 1—a user enters an email address into a form.
Step 2—the user copies the email address.
Step 3—the user pastes an email address into a “confirm email address” field of the form, completes the form and submits.
Step 4—the user selects and copies an image, then pastes the image into a suitable target area (e.g., a slideshow presentation) and then the user starts to compose a new form.
Step 5—the user attempts to paste his email address into the “Email address” field of a second form, but nothing happens because the most recent addition to the clipboard is an image. The text input field labeled “Email address” doesn't accept images (nor should it). Now the user has to either manually enter the email address or return to the source to re-copy the email address and paste it into the second form.
Another example would occur if the user copied a page of text in step 4 and then accidentally pasted the text (rather than the email address that the text had replaced on the clipboard) into the “To” field of the message header of an email message the user was composing. In this case, depending on the email application, the “To” field will often accept the text, which is, of course, not what the user intended.
Some versions of clipboard software allow users some mechanism for manually choosing an item from the clipboard other than the most recently added data item. For example, if a user wants to paste any item other than the most recently added item from a clipboard, he will have to first manually select an item from a visual representation of the items on the clipboard. However, this manually selected item may or may not also be appropriate for the target destination area.